Intel is trying to tie together a sprawling network of social media recruiting efforts to achieve more consistency, get more recruiters involved in social media, and have more of a conversation and less one-way communication. In addition to making sure it’s getting the messages out to the candidates it wants, Intel’s recruiting strategists also want to make sure they keep up with competitors like Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Intuit.

Watch for all of the following out of Intel in the year to come:

Intel will have a digital marketing team working on retrofitting Intel’s content for mobile devices in 2011, including the whole process of searching for and applying for a job.

Sejal Patel, recruitment marketing project manager, will be working on consolidating and revamping the company’s Facebook pages in 2011. Right now, Intel has a main company page; a more career-focused page called Discover Intel; and pages for some countries such as Vietnam. Patel would like Intel’s jobs to be fed automatically to some of these pages. Right now, not a lot of Intel jobs are posted on Facebook; Keith Molesworth, channels and ERP manager, says Facebook is “more of a conversation” right now.

Better search engine optimization. Intel looked at using Jobs2Web but has yet to do so. (Generally — though it’s doing a pilot with an employee-referral vendor – it has chosen to do a lot of its social media recruiting toolmaking in-house, partly for financial reasons, partly over concerns its org chart, email addresses, and other sensitive information could get out, and partly because of its own expertise.) Anyhow, it’s rethinking how it names things; “Discover Intel” for example, doesn’t ring a search engine’s bell like something worded more about careers.

Improving coordination. Right now, the different owners of the Intel social media initiatives don’t communicate as seamlessly as the company wants. A job candidate may, for example, ask a question on one site, and may not be directed to a conversation going on about that topic on another Intel recruiting page, simply because the Intel managers running the channels aren’t aware of all that’s going on. Intel could turn to a tool like ObjectiveMarketer.

Simply better using social media. Marketing and Branding Program Manager Allen Stephens says that “95% of our work is broadcasting, and 5% engaging.” He says Intel wants to make sure the community aspects of social media recruiting aren’t ignored. He also says that some Intel recruiters are “really good” at social media recruiting, while others are barely aware of all the many channels the company’s using. When Intel needs to ramp up in a certain area and for a certain job function, he wants the company to have data already in hand showing what channels will work best. To that end, Intel’s thinking about identifying “social media ambassadors” so that the manufacturing team, or software team, has 1-2 recruiters “up to speed in all social channels we have out there, engaging in a consistent way,” Stephens says.

All this is not to say that social media recruiting is new to Intel; on the contrary, what it’s trying to is get a better grip on all the chip giant is doing. Intel has vigorously hired social media marketing experts on its marketing team. It offers something called “Digital IQ” training to become an expert in social media and be listed in an internal database of social media practitioners at the firm. It has videos on YouTube; a Jobs page and a careers site; a main Twitter page and recruiter Twitter pages, social media guidelines; an external blog as well as the “Planet Blue” blog used internally; and a LinkedIn page.

Speaking of LinkedIn: Keith Molesworth says the site has been a “great success” for global recruiting, while some “global job boards,” he says, have touted themselves as global but tend to be weak in this region or that region. “LinkedIn is one of the few products out of the gate that seems to be successful globally,” he says. Intel is talking with LinkedIn about Referral Engine.

Stephens says that Intel’s “corporate career site is still our destination.” But, he says, “We’re primarily trying to attract engineers who are passive candidates. They don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’m going to check out the Intel.com site and look for career opportunities.’ They might be on LinkedIn and they might be on Facebook and they might be on Twitter.”

Ditto, says Tiffany Peery. She’s is an engineering recruiter who’s now the U.S. College Virtual Recruiting and Marketing Program Manager, and says it’s the passive engineering candidate Intel aims most for.

Teresa Chiappone is the web architect who handles a lot of the back-end Intel metrics. She makes sure that a job listing — on Twitter, for example — has a source code on it. That way, if a job seeker clicks on it and applies for a job, Intel can track it.

But, I asked her, “Doesn’t a candidate usually see a job on Facebook, Twitter, and so on, and then go online later to the career site to apply?”

Over the course of a couple of decades at Intel, she has seen the company jump on email quickly, and on the Internet quickly, and on social media quickly. “We’ve always been a very open communications kind of company,” she says. “This is just the next step in the evolution.”

It will be very interesting to see how Intel’s social recruiting efforts develop. I’m glad to see they are exploring many different options to gain more visibility with top candidates while staying mindful that there efforts need to be tied together for maximum impact.

I remember being very impressed with Intel’s Invest in America Alliance that committed to an increased hiring of college graduates. Ideally integrating social recruiting into their overall talent acquisition strategy will help them better connect with talent they seek.

Omowale Casselle

http://www.justrecruitme.com Miria Kostiainen

This fall we´ve launched our new, modern recruitment service and noticed, how much possibilities there actually are in the field of social networking. However, at least in Finland the whole social media as a communication board and a tool of expressing yourself is seen more as threat – not so much as opportunity.

We don´t believe that it´s a threat at all. People who use JustRecruitMe-recruiting service doesn´t believe so either. In our service (http://www.justrecruitme.com) we use all these tools which people have learned to use during the revolution of social networking and self expression throug Internet; job seekers creates career profiles where they upload pictures, video presentations, samples of work or studies and so on. Making a video of yourself gives more information of you to employers (who can investigate job seekers´career profiles in sort of headhunting-style in our service) than traditional job application has ever been able to give.

Intel does here something, what others are barely planning to do. For us Intel´s example is inspirational and also rewarding; it proves, that we´re on the right track with JustRecruitMe.com.

http://www.carquest.com Ginger Graham

How exciting! I want to work for Intel :) We are very early in our stages of adopting Social Media as a recruitment tool, and we certianly aren’t as resourced as they appear to be, but we are getting there. I have yet to find anyone who isn’t squeezing every last drop out of LinkedIn,I keep waiting for their next competitor to come out of the woodwork.

Reena Gupta

Social media recruiting is growing loops and bounds daily. But what becomes a particular interest is the rate at which the candidates are selected. However using an ATS(Applicant tracking system) like targetrecruit alongside social media recruiting will help in streamlining and selecting the perfect candidate to generate recruiting value from the social media campaign.

http://community.ere.net/profiles/ernestfeiteira/ Ernest Feiteira

Marketing and Branding Program Manager Allen Stephens says, “We’re primarily trying to attract engineers who are passive candidates. They don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’m going to check out the Intel.com site and look for career opportunities.’ They might be on LinkedIn and they might be on Facebook and they might be on Twitter.”

Very very true. A vary majority of good candidates don’t search job boards or the company site, except when they are is job search mode. With web2.010 (and soon web2.011) recruiters need to place content out on the open web to generate that engagement. Newsletter sign ups, RSS, video, blog, mobile, etc…

Keith Halperin

Hmmm. I’m interested in who Intel has doing the particular aspects of this. Identifying, locating, and contacting candidates using SM is $10/hr virtual sourcing work. Initiating and developing relationships to create a viable pipeline is $50+/hr work.

This is really interesting stuff. Kudos to Intel for being so open and transparent. This aren’t unusual challenges that Intel is facing and all corporate recruiting teams will need to evaluate how they hold the line on one consistent voice for their diverse recruiters and hiring needs. We also caution out clients not to forget about the rest of the digital recruitment marketing options – SEO, PPC, targeted ads, mobile and Email marketing. Balancing and optimizing these many recruitment marketing channels will be a huge challange in the coming years. It’s difficult but it will be an exciting time.

We have work to do to ensure they can be easily found. Another project for 2011!

http://www.strategi.biz Daniel Parrillo

Todd;

This is a GREAT Article – and a GREAT Example of how social networking and social media is being used in corporate recruiting (even SMBs – small to med-size businesses can benefit from a strong social network.)

With the semantic web and the new SEO/SEM analytic tools that are coming down the channels – recruiters, staffing and HR will be using search engine analytics in new and exciting ways – most importantly to defend their recruiting strategies, prove ROI on the strategy implements, and of course -defend one’s position within the hiring company.

I have referred to this article a few times already in my social networking lecture – and I hope to post it as a reference in my Box.net add-on to LinkedIn.